Has the “Great Recession” of our generation taken a toll on you?

Even if you still have your job, and your family hasn’t been personally hurt by our shaken economy and its slow resurgence, you’ve probably still been affected by the financial woes of our time. Additionally, the endless streams of discouraging news can extract emotional tolls from us, leaving us with haunting fears about the future.

That fear is the opposite of how God wants us to live.

In Proverbs 31:25 the virtuous woman “smiles at the future” (NASB), and in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus clearly cautioned us away from worry, and urged us toward trust in God’s ultimate care for us.

How can we smile at the future and trust for our provision when things around us sometimes feel so shaky?

First, we must return to an unshakable belief that God is indeed faithful, that He has written our names in the palm of His hand, and that He still governs in the affairs of men and women.

Second, we must do our best to honor the Bible’s instructions about financial management: giving, saving, living within our means, performing our work with excellence, doing our best to provide for our loved ones, and investing for the future based on the wisdom that’s currently available to us.

Once we’ve begun practicing these things there is nothing more to do but pray, trust, and smile as we fall in to God’s “everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).